The Skeleton Mambo
by TheArchimage
Summary: When Sans' popularity and laziness combine to land him in trouble it's up to Papyrus to save the day. But despite his best intentions is he only going to make things worse?


AN: Because some parts of this story might come off as mean-spirited, I want to mention up-front I don't have anything against Sans/Human OC, or Sans/Reader, or even Sans/Blatant-Self-Insert. I don't generally read those kinds of fics so I'm definitely not thinking of or criticizing any person or author in particular. I just wanted to write something silly and fun about the skeleton brothers trying to deal with Sans and all his love interests, so please take this fic in the spirit in which it was meant.

* * *

Papyrus was out getting groceries the first time he saw them. His brother had the same silly grin on his face he usually did, but today he was with someone new. A human, not one Papyrus recognized. She was rather tall, nearly as tall as Papyrus. Her dark hair with red highlights went down to the small of her back and she was dressed in fashionable, trendy clothing in stark contrast to Sans' grunge look of the same parka and track shorts. She kept a hand on Sans' shoulder and laughed at something he just said. Sans noticed him and perked up. "oh hey bro," Sans said with a wave. "'sup?"

"You know what's 'up', which puts me at a disadvantage." Papyrus titled his head slightly. He switched the bag of groceries to his left arm, carefully balancing the contents to avoid spilled any of the tomatoes on top. He held out his hand for a shake and greeted, "Oh, a new human! I am the Great Papyrus, Sans' brother! It is very nice to meet you…?"

"Miss," the woman said with robotic friendliness. She gripped Papyrus' hand and pumped once, their smile getting a little tighter for the brief moment they made contact. "Monica. I'm Sans' girlfriend. Actually, hee hee, I'm his soulmate. From the moment we were born we were destined for each other!"

"Wowie!" Papyrus gave Sans an appreciative look. Sans returned it with a shrug. "That's amazing news! Here I was, wondering if he was going to find any new friends on the surface, but he's already found a date! And not just that, a soulmate! It really is a good thing us monsters became free when we did, or the two of you might have lived through your whole lives without ever meeting the person you were destined for!"

Monica's smile twitched. "Yes. I guess that really is fortunate." When her focus returned to Sans her smile widened to reveal her top row of teeth and her eyes pinched. "Hey babe, there's that new restaurant on 23rd Street. How about we go there for dinner?"

"sure thing," Sans said. "you don't mind cooking just for yourself tonight, do you paps?"

"Not at all!" he replied, grinning widely to mask his discontent. "If it's just myself, it gives me room to experiment. If it is a success I will leave some in the culinary museum for you." Sans accepted this with a nod as Monica dragged him away. Papyrus watched them go with conflicting feelings. Saturday used to be their night back in the Underground, but on the surface Sans was always too busy. Either some party he needed to make an appearance at, or some event he wanted to go see, or going to open mike night. Papyrus had expected something to come up this week too, and he really was very proud of Sans for getting a human girlfriend, but he still felt guilty about his disappointment. He had one or two complaints to register about Monica but it was clear she cared about Sans deeply. She would warm up to Papyrus eventually, he was sure. And Papyrus... well, perhaps he was just going to have to get used to lonely Saturdays. He re-balanced his bags to distribute the weight between both arms and resumed his walk back home. Dinner was not going to make itself after all.

* * *

The next day Papyrus was on his way to return some books to the librarby when he ran into them again. From the first moment Papyrus thought something was a little off. Sans looked less than comfortable to be with his soulmate: his shoulders were stiff and he kept glancing out of the corner of his eyes, a bead of sweat on his forehead. The human must have gotten a cut, style, and dye because their hair was now short, cropped, mousy, and brown. She was dressed in a two-piece business suit which clashed aesthetically with her previous attire, and Papyrus could have sworn her skin was a slightly lighter shade the day before. Papyrus greeted them, "Ah yes, Sans' soulmate! So good to see you again."

"Yes, I am his soulmate," she said, holding out her hand for a handshake. "Good to meet you, I'm Erica. You must be his brother."

Papyrus took it but his handshake was limp and distracted. He frowned and eyed Sans, who evaded his gaze. Papyrus could have sworn she called herself something else before. And this human looked completely different than she did the day before! Then again… it was possible he had not heard her name properly the first time. He _was_ pretty bad with names, and at least he got the ending syllable right this time. And lots of people wore different clothes every day. Sans probably met her today when she was coming out of work and she had not yet changed into more casual clothing. Yes, that seemed like a reasonable assumption. No reason to suspect anything untoward was going on here. His smile returned in full force. "Erica! Such a pretty name! I will endeavor to carve it onto my heart, except I don't have a heart so I suppose I'll just have to write it on my hand instead."

Erica's smile became tight. "Riiiiight. We actually can't stay, the movie will start without us if we don't get going." Erica pulled Sans briskly across the street. Sans shot an apologetic look to his brother, his awkward smile promising to make it up to him. Which was silly! After all there was nothing to make up for! Papyrus continued on his way, and in a moment he was once again musing about how humans could not even spell "librarby" properly on their signs and had all but forgotten the incident.

* * *

He had so been looking forward to this day, too. This was the day he was to visit the DMV and get his driver's license. He had watched so many movies about driving he could picture it vividly: the open road, the wind in his hair, the setting sun bathing the world in orange as he raced along a cliffside edge dodging machine gun fire from helicopters! So thrilling! So exciting! And soon, so very soon, he would be a part of that world too! Well… hm. Maybe they could negotiate on the machine guns. It seemed a little dangerous to him. Perhaps some healthy and character-forming spike mazes instead? Yes, that sounded a lot better. Puzzles which tested reflexes and reaction times rather than skill were hardly puzzles at all in his mind.

On his way, however, he ran into Sans and his soulmate again. Once again she looked completely different, with a similar skin tone to their mutual friend Frisk but only half again as tall as Sans, which Papyrus was beginning to learn was pretty short for an adult human. How was this human doing that? Frisk certainly never seemed to be able to grow and shrink at will. He waved at them and called out "Yoo-hoo!" Sans winced and straightened at the sound of his voice, the lights in his sockets shivering. His eyes darted between Papyrus and his soulmate as Papyrus closed the distance. His date, however, seemed nonplussed; they raised an eyebrow like they had never seen Papyrus before. "Hello!" Papyrus greeted. "You remember me, Sans' brother Papyrus! It's so good to see you again…" He had gotten the name wrong once already. Hmm, it ended with "ca", so it could be Frederica, or Rebecca, or Haruka was an option too, or maybe-

The woman curtly supplied, "Rita."

Papyrus' head whirled toward Sans fast enough to make an audible snap. Sans scrunched up their neck trying to retract his head into his coat. "Rita. Yeeeeeees. However could I have forgotten."

Rita crossed her arms. "You couldn't have forgotten anything, we've never met."

Papyrus smiled as he remembered his role. He had to be a good wingman even in the most trying of circumstances, then get the full story directly from Sans later. "All the more reason for being unable to remember!"

Rita leaned down towards Sans and stage-whispered, "Hey, is it just me or is your brother…?"

"cool?" Sans supplied. "yeah, he's the coolest. uh, aren't we gonna be late, or something?" He grabbed her arm and pulled her away into the crowd before either she or Papyrus could say something else. Papyrus considered chasing after them but decided against it. Even with his misgivings it would be rude to interrupt his date.

That night Frisk suggested throwing a party on Sunday to celebrate Papyrus passing his driver's test, but he was having a hard time getting excited about it. It was not as if Sans would be able to find the time to be there, what with at least three girlfriends.

* * *

Toriel sent Papyrus a text message the next day asking about Sans' soulmate "Tina", whom she met that day. Yesterday Undyne saw Sans was helping his girlfriend "Sandra" try on swimsuits in the department store. According to Alphys, Sandra had explained that Sans was her soulmate while Sans looked guilty and neither confirmed nor denied. And that very night a photo emerged on social media of Sans dancing with a "Mary". Perhaps "dancing" was too generous a term; he was standing in place, confused and overwhelmed, while Mary ground her body against his. Mary had tagged Sans as "my skeltal SM!" Sans himself had been keeping very busy lately, avoiding Papyrus' attempts to talk to him, but it was clear the situation was deteriorating fast. Sans was up to six now, and there was no way a lazybones like him could handle that many dates at once. Past a certain point not even Papyrus would be able to solve the problem, and that meant he had to take drastic measures.

Papyrus waited until he heard the door to Sans' room open before he went down to breakfast. Their house on the surface was a little smaller than the one they had in Snowdin, but it had room for all the essentials; separate rooms for both the brothers, a couch for guests to crash on and to watch television on, and a kitchenette with a small dining table. True, they had to give up on a few things; the ceiling was too low to make the sink as high as Papyrus wanted and the local pressure system was too low for Sans to generate a self-sustaining trash tornado, but being able to greet the sun in the morning and the moon at night made up for a lot of its deficiencies. Sans sat at the table with a piece of toast, unbuttered. Papyrus crept up behind him and leaned over the table to look him in the eyes. "Sans, can we have a discussion about your, ah, 'soulmate'? I am getting a little concerned by your behavior concerning them. Not gender-neutral them, plural them, which is where my concern lies." Sans dropped his toast and attempted to stand, but with a smooth motion Papyrus turned his soul blue and pressed him gently but firmly back into the chair. "Oh no you don't, Sans! You have done a fine job avoiding me all week, but up with this I will not put! I can turn a blind eye to many things and I have never begrudged your popularity, but as an outside observer it appears as though you are courting multiple partners. Now as long as everyone involved is aware of the situation I don't see anything wrong with dating many people at once. The great Papyrus is very open-minded that way! But it is clear from your behavior you know you are doing something wrong. And to call all of them your soulmate, cheapening the word by overuse! As your brother I am worried you are heading down a dangerous path."

Sans shook his head. "i know what this looks like. but you have to believe me, this wasn't my idea."

Papyrus crossed his arms and stood as rigid as a club bouncer on a Friday night. "I am willing to give you a chance, brother, but I will need an explanation."

His brother rubbed the back of his skull, looking down and to the side. "i never called any of 'em my soulmate, they all did that on their own. when monica first saw me she practically tackled me, saying stuff like me being handsome and cool and sexy and how we were soulmates. and i was like, okay, great, as long as i don't gotta do nuthin' it's fun to hang out with a human that likes you. i didn't see a problem with it. but then erica showed up and said a lot of the same things and I got a little worried. like, i understand the concept of a 'soulmate', it's kinda naive but whatever it's fun to pretend something so convenient exists, but even i know nobody's supposed to have two of them. i tried telling her i was already seeing somebody but she said that wouldn't be a problem and kept pestering me. it was harder to keep telling her no than to give in, so i acquiesced. and then more and more girls kept showing up and now they're making huge demands on my time and energy. they want me to go out on dates and pick them up from work or school or college and if I try to hang out with one the others get all pouty and… it's wearing me down something serious."

Papyrus boiled it down: "So you're dating six different women because you're too lazy to tell them 'no'?"

Sans was beginning to sweat again. "seven. i haven't introduced jessica to anybody yet."

The ticking of the clock and the _cliclickaclick_ of Papyrus drumming his fingers on the table were the only sounds in the kitchen for a long moment. Papyrus inhaled for five seconds, exhaled for three. "Sans," he said. "Has it ever occurred to you that a little bit of effort now saves a lot of effort in the future? That if you firmly told these ladies 'sorry, I'm not interested' at the outset you would not be in this situation now?"

"yeah. but when they asked to date me i thought, 'tomorrow-sans will have more energy to deal with this so i'll just go with the flow for now and make what happens next his problem.' and then before i know it, _i'm_ tomorrow-sans and i don't have any better of an idea of what to do than yesterday-sans did."

"Yesterday-Sans is awfully inconsiderate."

"kinda."

"Well!" Papyrus said, finally releasing his blue magic. "The solution to this is as genius as it is simple! All you have to do is tell them you are not interested in dating right now and let them down gently."

Sans winced. "can't i just… wait for them to get tired and dump me?"

Steady now. Papyrus willed himself not to explode in frustration. He knew how his brother was, always seeking the easiest way out. All he had to do was explain it in a way he would empathize with. "Think of it this way: you already know how much work it is to keep a relationship going; an interspecies relationship is going to be even harder; and an interspecies romance you have no personal interest in is going to be harder still. So wouldn't breaking it off yourself, in fact, be the lazy way out?"

He mulled it over in his head, slowly nodding. "yeah. yeah okay, i see what you're saying. i guess i can give that a shot. man, you're so smart bro. thanks for looking out for me all the time."

"It's no trouble at all, Sans," Papyrus beamed. "Let me know how it goes!"

* * *

Papyrus flipped through the channels idly. There was a lot of content on human television, more than anyone could ever digest, so why was so much of it so bad? In a way he missed the Underground; there was only one channel, so if you did not like what was on it you did not watch television. You could go out! You could read a book! You could play a game, or learn something new, or walk around town! It was the perfect excuse! But here on the surface if there was something bad on one channel you could just change it. And if you did not like the new channel, you could change it again. And again and again and again, there was no end to it. By the time you looped back around to the channel you started on the thing you did not like was probably over and there was something new in its place. If one was not careful they could spend all day switching from channel to channel, neither being productive nor being entertained. That was the rationale Papyrus used for canceling cable a month or two ago. He was beginning to think he would need to get Netflix so there would be something to watch when he needed to kill time. Now would be a good time for that, a taping of Mettaton's last live performance was going to debut next month and-

His reverie was broken by a sound somewhere between a snap of the fingers and a whoosh of air, the tell-tale sign of Sans popping out of one of his shortcuts. The sound pierced right through his skull, he _hated_ when Sans did that while he was in the room. His anger dissipated when he noticed Sans setting locks on the door in a state of extreme (especially for him) agitation. He fumbled with the deadbolt as he pleaded, "you gotta hide me bro."

He pressed the mute button on the remote and stood from the couch. "Sans? What is going on?"

The deadbolt caught just as something heavy slammed into the door. Sans held his breath as the sound repeated several times. Once it was done he sighed heavily. "i decided to follow your advice and get rid of all the girls. you know, it's not working out, it's not you it's me, sever, the whole spiel. i was going over my lines and tried to imagine how it would play out, and i thought i had it down. but then i figured, 'man, doing this seven times is gonna be a real drag, i'll call all the girls and have them meet up so i can dump them all at once'. so that's what i did."

Papyrus was beginning to see the shape of the calamity. "Continue."

"apparently they all decided that if the trouble was dating all of them at once, then only one of them should get to keep dating me. they wanted me to pick one of 'em as my 'true soulmate' and wouldn't listen when i said i didn't believe in that stuff. one of them made a reservation for a hotel, said they 'knew what to do', and then they all got this _look_ in their eyes, like the one doggo gives us when he's gone a week without his dog treat fix. freakiest thing I ever saw. they looked… so _hungry_."

Papyrus internally mused that 'thirsty' would probably be the more correct word but he was not about to traumatize Sans by informing him of what that term meant or further traumatize him by letting him know Papyrus knew what that term meant. "Oh dear," Papyrus tapped his fingers against his teeth. "This is, and not in a small way, my fault. I had clearly underestimated their infatuation with you. I assume that's them at the door?" Sans nodded worriedly. "Right then. Step aside! I got you into this, I will get you out!"

Sans flattened his body against the door. "can't let you do that," he begged. "they're crazy. i never even told them i live here and they got here almost as fast as my shortcuts. they're dangerous."

"Nonsense!" he waved off. "I will win them over with my wit and magnetic personality. I realize it may be a little unfair of me to unleash my full charms on unsuspecting humans, but for your sake I will dirty myself with such tactics!" He put a hand on Sans' shoulder and guided him away from the door. His hand trembled slightly as he undid the deadbolt though he tried to ignore it. Deep breath. He ripped the door open, nearly slamming it off its hinges, and walked onto the front steps to the adoring cries of his newest fans.

Hm? There was not as much whooping and cheering as he expected. None at all, in fact! And the expressions of those girls… he would not call them 'adoring'. 'Confused' was more like it. "Fret not, humans!" he said. "I realize you are upset that Sans cannot offer you their companionship. But there is no reason to fear! I, the great Papyrus, am more than willing to offer all the skeletal love you could ever ask for!"

The girls looked at each other. Then they looked at Papyrus and as one responded, ""No.""

This was not a promising start. "No?"

"No!" said… he did not know this one, she must be Jessica. "You can't just… transfer your feelings to someone else! Love doesn't work that way!"

"I realize that!" Papyrus said. "I am only trying to help make this transition to a Sans-free life easier for you!"

"Why would you think we'd be satisfied with that?" Monica said. "You're nothing like him. I mean… he's so cool! And suave! And sophisticated!" The rest of the girls nodded their approval.

"Sophisticated? _Sans?_ " Papyrus blinked, trying to figure out a definition of that word which would describe Sans. "He didn't even own a cell phone until he came up to the surface!"

"Look _bone_ -head," Tina snarled. "The point is, nobody wants to date a dork like you. You're loud, gangly, stupid, and just _weird_. How could you think, even for a second, that you would be anywhere close to-" The women and girls took their focus off him and all their faces lit up like sunshine. ""Sans!"" they squealed in unison.

Sans put a steady hand on his brother's hip. "relax bro," he said. "thanks. you did good. let me handle the rest." He gently nudged Papyrus away from the door while keeping a tight grip on the doorknob with the other hand.

"Please don't give them a bad time, Sans." His emotional distress was so great he momentarily forgot he was not supposed to know what Sans was capable of.

Luckily Sans' emotional distress was so great he did not register Papyrus' slip-up. He only shrugged with an insincere grin. "i wouldn't dream of it."

"Sans, the lights in your eyes have gone out. Your words aren't matching your actions!"

"i'm just going to talk to them about the importance of family. won't take long." He waved Papyrus back into the house and calmly shut the door behind him.

Papyrus waited. He did not hear any screaming or wailing. He did not smell the sulphur of summoned demon heads or the ozone of discharged lasers. All he saw was Sans casually opening the door and walking upstairs to his room after five of the most excruciating minutes Papyrus had ever experienced. He cautiously checked the front step. The girls had vanished.

* * *

The next Saturday Papyrus received apology cards from Erica, Monica, Rita, Tina, Sandra, Mary, and Jessica. It was the most mail he had ever gotten at once, so that automatically made the day a contender for "Best Day Ever" (with the understanding that the day the barrier broke had retired the trophy and was no longer eligible for the award). But it was that night which clinched the position. It was getting close to eight o'clock, when Sans would usually leave for the night. But Sans had not even started to get ready. He sat in the recliner, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling with a contented smile on his face.

Papyrus looked up from his collection of jumble puzzles, scratching the side of his skull with the eraser end of his pencil. "Don't you have some sort of date tonight, Sans? Perhaps meeting with people at the pub, or maybe one of your girlfriends wants to hang out?"

"nope," he said. "got nowhere to be and noplace to go." Sans sounded oddly pleased about that.

"Your inexplicable popularity could not have dissipated so quickly, Sans. I cannot help but feel you are up to something."

He shrugged, keeping his eyes closed. "don't know what to tell you. nobody's called to invite me anywhere all week, so I guess I'm spending a quiet saturday night with you."

Papyrus looked over to the table where Sans' cell phone, deathly silent these last three days, lay on the table. He pretended not to see the phone's battery laying next to it. "I see," he said simply, flipping a page in his magazine. "In a little bit I could get out one of the board games, for old time's sake. I-If you want."

"that could be a lot of fun. i'll be finished with my nap in fifteen minutes or so, we can start then."

Papyrus tapped his phalanges together. He decided to push his luck: "There's going to be a party tomorrow to celebrate me getting my driver's license! I-I know Sunday is when you catch up on naps, but..."

"that's amazing. o' course i'd wanna celebrate with you. for my bro i can miss a couple naps." Papyrus was making an excited noise so high-pitched it was beyond the measure of human hearing. Sans shimmied back and forth to get more comfortable in his seat. He sighed, his grin becoming just a tiny bit wider. "ain't this the life."


End file.
